Randall once did a pillow count between our house and the cottage and I’ll admit, the number was a little absurd. I can’t help myself, I just love pillows!! I spotted a pile of feed/seed/bean bags at one of our favourite vendors at the annual antique show the family goes to in Michigan and immediately knew it wanted to turn them into pillows for the cottage!

We all have our favourite spots in our homes. The chair we like to curl up in to read. The stool we sit on to have our morning coffee. The corner of the couch we tuck into and binge watch TV. This spot for me is our vegetable garden. It’s the place I can’t wait to get to on Saturday mornings and the one I miss most in the winter.

My sweet Bea loves the great outdoors as much as I do. The natural world is a place of wide-eyed wonder and it brings me so much joy to watch her marvel in it. This past weekend she saw her first monarch butterflies and still hasn’t stopped talking about it. It’s one of the great privileges of being a parent; seeing the world through the eyes of our children. And it is my sincere hope that she gets to experience that same joy with her children and her children’s children.

This started as an idea ahead of the holidays. I kept thinking about all the waste associated with gift giving. The packaging, the wrapping, the stuff that ends up in a landfill. What began as a seed to reduce gift-giving waste, turned into me looking at our everyday lives and how we could reduce our consumption and most importantly, our single-use items.

When we bought our house 4 years ago it had been completely renovated which meant everything was fresh and white. A blank canvas. We started decorating and adding our personal touches, but still kept our neutral walls. I love the aesthetic of a crisp white home, but after 4 years I got a little bored and antsy to make some changes; our main-floor powder room seemed like the best place to start.

I love to joke with my Ma that one of my greatest joys as a parent is to give Bea all the things I wanted as a kid. And I assure you I’m joking, because I did have the best childhood with the best parents.